A major question in the literature on the classical gold standard concerns the efficiency of international arbitrage. Most authors have examined efficiency by looking at the spread of the gold points, gold-point violations, the flow of gold in profitable or unprofitable directions, or by tests...

This paper uses extensive micro-level data from Argentine agriculture circa 1880-1914 to explore various hypotheses relating to the supposed unusual and favored position enjoyed by the owner-operated large scale estates (latifundia) on the pampas as compared to small-scale units operated by cash...

Research finds strong links between credit booms and macroeconomic outcomes like financial crises and output growth. Are impacts also seen in financial asset prices? We document this robust and significant connection for the first time using a large sample of historical data for many countries....

Standard neoclassical growth models rarely admits international factor mobility: convergence may result from factor accumulation in a closed economy, or from technology transfer. Conventional models are thus poorly equipped to explain the contribution of international factor flows to convergence...

An empirical tradition in international trade seeks to establish whether the predictions of factor abundance theory match present-day data. In the analysis of goods trade and factor endowments, mildly encouraging results were found by Leamer et al. But ever since the appearance of Leontief's...

Financial crises have large deleterious effects on economic activity, and as such have been the focus of a large body of research. This study surveys the existing literature on financial crises, exploring how crises are measured, whether they are predictable, and why they are associated with...

Why did international capital flows rise to such heights in the late 19th century, the years between 1907 and 1913 in particular? Britain placed half of her annual savings abroad during those seven years, and 76 percent of it went to the New World countries of Canada, Australia, the USA,...